Prisoners serving short sentences will also have to undertake compulsory rehabilitation for the first time.

Most released prisoners and people serving community sentences are managed by the public sector probation service - provided by 35 trusts across England and Wales. But under the Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) proposals, responsibility for monitoring some 200,000 medium- and low-risk offenders will transfer to the private sector.

3. I'm surprised Serco doesn't already have the contract.

They've taken over so much in Australia already - prisons, migrant detention centres, army services, hospitals - and as they're a British company, I'd have thought they'd already have their finger in the pie.

I find it pretty scary - a private firm is running so much of the infrastructure that, as a socialist, I think should be run by the government (i.e. the people). I'm afraid that one day the world will wake up and find that Serco is the world power.

Read this manifesto from their CEO, David Poole:

"Serco’s mission in life is to be the world's greatest service company. So what we are trying to do is to make that service offer be a bit broader. Traditionally Serco has focussed on public sector services - and also on front-line services. What we are looking to do is continue to grow Serco’s capabilities into the middle and back office which are also areas where our clients need more help. And we are also shifting the emphasis towards the private sector. So just trying to get the balance right- that was some of the strategic rationale behind our acquisitions.

"Now if you look at what we did in acquiring Intelenet - which is a large leading global pure-play Indian organisation with huge industrialisation - and combine that with the other acquisitions we made - for example The Listening Company in the UK which is a very-high-end, very sophisticated customer management service provider very intimate with its customers - and then combine all that with the very trusted brand of Serco you create a really powerful proposition. So actually we are now Europe’s largest BPO provider."

4. Unlike other firms in the same field....

....Serco aren't a household name. Partly because they aren't run by somebody as high profile as Emma Harrison, and partly because they've managed to ensure that they haven't had any dirty linen washed in public such as A4E's scandals or G4S's Olympic cock-up.

There are some good bits in the government's proposals, but there is a concern that some of the proposed arrangements could be as disasterous as those for the government's "workfare" scheme.

6. I'm rather surprised that they have such a low profile.

In Australia, they have rather a murky reputation, and there is a Facebook site called "Serco Watch", which reports on breaches of safety, etc.

Only last year there was a high-profile case where a prisoner had died of a heart attack while being transported in searing heat across central Australia. It was found that there was no communications system between the prisoners and the drivers, so the drivers couldn't hear the other prisoners calling for help when the man collapsed. Yet Serco, who ran the operation, were never indicted for their negligence.

There have also been a number of accusations that the officers who staff the detention centres for illegal immigrants are poorly trained and inadequate in numbers, with the result that when detainees are suffering genuine depression and illness, they are too often ignored. Again, Serco is responsible, yet they are never called to account by the government, and they are given more and more contracts.